


Seabound

by afterandalasia



Category: The Little Mermaid (1989)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Role Reversal, Community: disney_kink, F/M, Ficlet, First Meetings, Human Ariel, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Merpeople, Merperson Eric, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-03
Updated: 2013-06-03
Packaged: 2018-06-01 00:41:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 725
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6494086
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/afterandalasia/pseuds/afterandalasia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ariel's father had warned her about the nixie, called them foul creatures of the sea and worse, but she had never fully believed him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Seabound

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lysythe](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=lysythe).



> From the [prompt](http://disney-kink.livejournal.com/4400.html?thread=2993200#t2993200) on Disney Kink.

_"Don't go down to the water,"_ her father had said, when he built the wall to keep out the sea. _"There are dangerous creatures there. The Nixie are foul beings."_  
  
It could not keep out the sharp salt tang on the air, the crying of the gulls, the lapping of the water against the base of the wall. Ariel walked close to it, when she could escape the guards her father set on her, resting her hands on the cold stone and listening to the steady thrub of the sea beyond, like the heartbeat of some mighty creature.  
  
In her bath, she slipped her head beneath the surface and felt the silken touch of it upon her skin. For a moment, she even breathed in, feeling it cool and welcome in her mouth, before rearing to the surface spluttering and coughing against its foreignness, fighting not to retch.  
  
Every time her father found out that she had tried to go to the sea again, he would shout, rage, throw objects across the room. Ariel cowered at first, simply praying that this time his hands would not turn on her, but before many years had passed she grew angry in return, braving the strikes on her face or arms or back just in order to give herself a voice in return.  
  
  
  
  
  
The worst fight comes when she speaks of the nixie. She saw them once, she said, when she was a child, and her father roared his anger and denied that those creatures would ever have come to the land. But Ariel is sure that she remembers the touch of the sea.  
  
She had a bruise on her cheek and the taste of blood in her mouth when she ran down to the sea again. A storm was waning, rain still in the air but the winds stilling, and a section of the old wall had torn down.  
  
Ariel slowed, reaching to wipe the last traces of blood from her mouth, as she came to the wall. No-one had found it or reported it yet, no-one had told her father... no-one had walled out the sea again. Breathless, she drew closer, picking over the fallen rocks and squinting through the rain and the hair plastered to her face. Her heart pounded in her chest; she could smell the sea beyond, see glimpses of grey-blue tipped in white.  
  
A closer stirring caught her attention, and for a moment she clung close to the wall. To be caught trying to gain access to the sea was a crime; for her, it would mean the worse wrath of her father. But the figure did not move again, and cautiously she drew closer.  
  
A nixie.  
  
She gasped, and could not help herself but draw closer. For all of her life, she had been told that the nixie were feral creatures, subhuman, that they ate children and left their dead to rot on the ocean floor. But she could see the gleaming deep-blue tail of the figure slumped among the rubble alongside his human upper body, and somehow he does not frighten her as he should.  
  
She crept closer, picking over stones until finally she knelt beside him. He was slumped across the rubble, a large stone across his back; she levered it aside, and saw the faint mottling of forming bruises but hoped there was nothing worse. His upper body was that of a man, in form and size, muscles powerful, skin smooth and hairless. For all that she should have blushed, Ariel could feel nothing but fascination as she shifted alongside his head, pushing back the short black curls to reveal his face.  
  
He looked so human, despite the stone knife in the makeshift belt at his waist. There was not the malice or evil that she had been told about.  
  
She sat with him until he woke, and though she could not understand a word of his tongue, she could hear that they were words and not the sounds of animals. She sang to him, and stroked his face, and when the weakness had left his limbs it was only reluctantly that she released him to the rising-again tide.  
  
"I will find a way to you," she whispered, as he lingered on the shoreline and looked back with longing reflected in his eyes. "I will find a way."


End file.
